Melting Iron Hearts
by ampoke
Summary: Gajeel saves Levy from an ambush. She'd been attacked and assaulted by an entire dark guild. *Lemon in the future* It's not going to be a huge part of the story but it will be in various chapters *Somewhat talks of rape* Please do not read if you're sensitive to rape and sexual assault (Gajeel is not the rapist nor is he the bad guy whatsoever) I don't own Fairy Tail


"Go home, Lily."

"Honestly, I think it'd best if I just took her with me. Wendy can help-"

Gajeel stood eye to eye with overgrown cat, "Go home, Lily! You can't expect her to be able to fly right now. She's knocked out cold and who knows when she's gonna to wake up? She's not well enough to travel. Go get the little girl if ya want her, but I'm not gonna to let you take Levy all the way to Magnolia from here. It's too dangerous."

Lily shrunk, pulling out his wings, "This is a dangerous game you're playing right now. Don't come crying to me when your silent romance gets one of you killed."

With that Gajeel was left in silence, Levy lying unconscious on his coat. He would never have admitted it to anyone but Levy's subconscious, but he too afraid to be angry at the cat.

"Don't do anything stupid on me, Shorty. I'm counting on you to make it back to the guild breathing."

Gajeel slumped next to the girl, brushing the hair out of her bruised face. She'd never looked so fragile before that moment, laying in the fetal position, taking in shallow, painful breaths.

He stared up at the sky, trying to find any of the constellations that Levy had pointed out to him so many times before. The lion was the only one showing himself. Gajeel pointed at the sky, "Loki's watching over you, Shrimp. We can always count on the leader of the zodiac to keep us safe."

Gajeel tried to smile at the thought of him and Levy laying out in the grass in front of his house and yelling into the sky, talking to constellations that they knew to be friends of Lucy's. The inside jokes followed them around, showing up at the most serious of times.

Before then the jokes could put a smile on their faces at any moment, but now Gajeel was pointing at a lion in the sky, begging Levy to share the joke with him.

All he got was a weak cough in responce.

"Why'd ya have to take this job by yourself," Gajeel muttered. "You knew that I wanted to go with you. I love watching ya work, and no matter how much you act like it annoys ya when I watch over your shoulder, I know that you enjoy the company."

It was supposed to be a simple translation job. It was only supposed to take half a day to get to the East forest, half a day of translation, and a night of traveling.

She'd been gone for six days.

Jet and Droy had taken a two week job with Lisanna so they didn't even know that she was gone. Gajeel on the other hand had been spending every moment in the guild, watching for Levy to arrive. He'd checked Fairy Hills every morning and night just to see if she'd shown up and gone home immediately.

He'd practically brought the devil out of Mira trying to figure out where Levy's job was, but she was worried of him acting rash.

"What if I hadn't come looking for ya when I did? What if the next time we heard from you was because they'd found you dead out here?" Gajeel whispered to her, stroking her hair.

Him and Lily had ran out to the East Forest that night, searching every inch of the area for her. It took hours for them to even sense movement, let alone find Levy and her attackers.

An entire dark guild against one mage. How weak do you have to be to try and prove yourself like that? Gajeel and Lily took them out with the anger and worry that had been bubbling since the day Levy was late.

"Listen man, we were just playing a little game of tag. She's a tough one, you know? Lasted five days and four nights against us," one of the guild members tried to reason with Gajeel. "Please don't kill me. I was just having a little bit of fun."

Gajeel growled and knocked the man back at least one hundred feet, "Almost killing someone isn't just a little bit of fun!"

Lily grabbed at Gajeel's pant leg, "Come on, Gajeel," the cat prompted. "We got rid of all of them. It's time to get Levy out of the forest."

Five days against an entire dark guild by herself. Levy was stronger than anyone could have ever imagined.

As it came closer to morning, Gajeel's eyes began to close despite his best efforts to stay awake to watch out for Levy. The sun had already risen above the mountain tops when Gajeel woke up to Levy screaming and coughing.

He rose to find himself staring right into Levy's wild eyes. She tried to sit up, but Gajeel held her against the ground. "Hey, Shrimp. Calm down, will ya? You can't just start flailing around or you're gonna hurt yourself more."

Levy's eye wondered to her surroundings before falling onto Gajeel's face. She examined him, just to see if it was truly him leaning above her. A tear slid down her cheek, "Gajeel?"

"You're okay, Levy. You're okay now," Gajeel used the softest, kindest voice that he could muster.

"I'm alive?" Levy reached a weak arm out towards him, brushing his arm with her fingers.

Gajeel smiled, sitting back and taking her hand in his, "You're alive. You put up a really good fight. Everyone's gonna be really proud of ya when we get back to the guild."

"I thought I-" she broke off, coughing. Gajeel grabbed a flask, biting and chewing on the cap instead of taking the time to unscrew it. He helped Levy sit up enough to take a drink of the water.

"Just rest, okay? We're not going anywhere until you're feeling better."

Levy nodded, laying her head in against Gajeel's jacket. Gajeel held her hand as she slept. She was shaking and talking in her sleep, having nightmares of the days that no one was there to help her defend herself. The shaking eventually turned to thrashing and crying.

Gajeel shook her lightly, "It's just a dream, Shrimp. Wake up. It's just a bad dream."

"Get your hands off of me!" Levy scream, sitting up. She wrapped her arms around her chest, guarding herself and trying her best to move away from Gajeel.

He put his hands in the air in surrender, "I'm not gonna touch you, but you do need to lay down. You're gonna hurt yourself more than ya already are."

Levy curled herself into the fetal position, sobbing into her knees, "Don't let them hurt me, Gajeel. Please don't let them."

Gajeel put his hand out, offering it to Levy, "Can I come to you?" She nodded, unwrapping herself slightly. He moved to sit closer to her, wrapping an arm around her shivering body. "I'm not going to let anyone get near you, Shrimp. I promise ya that much. I should never have let you go on this mission alone."

Levy let her head rest on Gajeel's chest, "I thought I could do it alone, but I had no chance against all of them."

"You did the best that one wizard could do on their own. I'm proud of you. Everyone in the guild is gonna be proud of ya when we get back home."

She nodded, closing her eyes, "Those were not wizards, nor were they men. They were monsters, and I hope that you put them through as much pain as they put me through."

Gajeel brushed a tear off of her face, "Trust me when I say that they're not gonna be bothering anyone everyone else ever again."

Levy fell asleep soon enough, using Gajeel as protection and a pillow. He couldn't mind less. Making sure that she was safe was easiest while she was wrapped in his arms.

She made soft noises in her sleep, but nothing like the crying and screaming from before. She'd occasionally move closer to Gajeel, grabbing onto his shirt or burying her head in his chest.

Gajeel took Levy's appearance in. Her bruises and cuts. The torn dress hanging off of her body, exposing her bandaged stomach and waist. A purple and blue bruise surrounding her left eye and her bottom lip swollen. Although she seemed to have been on the losing end of a fight, she was alive and that was better than what most would have been

Gajeel breathed in deeply, trying to take in her scent for comfort but the smell was strange. Gajeel had thought that it was just the elements distorting his senses before, but this was something far more drastic.

She had her scent. The one that Gajeel could smell from miles away. The smell of old books, ink, coffee beans, and citrus. Along with the smell of pure and untouched innocence.

The smell changed into musk, blood, sweat, and other's filth burying itself inside of her body.

Gajeel could feel the fury rising. First a nauseating clench in his gut, rising to a fire filling his lungs and and pain in his chest. A growl creeped up his throat and his nose filled with smoke.

"Are you okay?" Levy asked, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes and wincing when she touched the black eye.

"Fine, Shrimp. Don't worry 'bout me. Hungry?" he grabbed a backpack and pulled out some bread and strawberries.

Levy smiled, "You brought strawberries?"

Gajeel scratched the back of his head, "Well, I know that they're your favorite so…"

She sat up in his lap, leaning against Gajeel's chest and setting the box of strawberries in front of her. Levy grabbed for a strawberries and popped it into her mouth, "Did you pick these from Lily's garden?"

"Don't mention that to him, okay? He'd be pissed if he found out that I took the best strawberries from his little project. He's competing in the fruit harvest festival."

"They are really good. He's bound to win with these," Levy grinned. She reached up to Gajeel, putting a strawberry to his lips. He took it in one bite, eating every part of it. "You're not supposed to eat the leaves!"

Gajeel shrugged, "It's all just dirt food."

"You view fruits and vegetables at dirt food?" Levy laughed. "That's oddly endearing."

Gajeel scoffed, "That's enough dirt food for you. I need to replace your bandages." Levy allowed him to unwrap the bandages from her waist and clean out the cuts. He lifted her up to wrap fresh bandages.

Her tattered dress was disintegrating with every movement. Gajeel's hands were large and rough, tearing the dress easily and leaving less and less to the imagination.

Levy covered her chest as the dress split closer to the top. She'd already lost most of her dignity as soon as the realization that Gajeel had seen her pink, bookish panties.

"I've already seen the matching bra, Shrimp. No need to cover up for me. It's not like there's anything ya need to hide about your body," Gajeel assured, his voice not wavering from monotone.

"I just… I don't like being exposed," Levy said quietly. She looked away from Gajeel, not wanting him to see the tears filling her eyes.

Gajeel growled, slamming his fist into the dirt. Levy yelped, covering her face with her hands, afraid of being hit.

"What did they do to you, Levy?"

Her lip quivered, "Nothing. They were just messing around."

"Don't lie to me!" Gajeel yelled.

"Please don't yell at me!" she cried. "I don't want you to yell at me, Gajeel."

Gajeel sat back, wringing his hands, "Sorry." He looked to the sky, trying to calm his anger. "You know that I can smell everything that a normal person shouldn't be able to. So I can smell other men on you. What's worse is that I can smell them in you too. It's hard for me to know that I wasn't there while they were hurting you like that."

"I don't need you to take care of me all the time. I'm not a child, I can handle this. Gajee, I'm fine."

"You're not fine," Gajeel retorted, shortly. "If you were fine, you wouldn't be crying at the thought of someone touching you like that again."

Levy brushed away her tears and forced a smile, "I don't want you to worry about this. It's not your problem. It's not like I was planning on having sex anytime soon anyways, so why does it matter?"

Gajeel ran a hand through his mane, "Because you're _pure_. You're smart, Shrimp. You know that you're attractive and you're kind. You could have any guy you want. You could go sleeping around with every guy in the guild if you wanted to. But you don't. You don't care about hooking up and shit like that. You care about people too much for one night stands and I don't see how you can just sit here and act like it's okay that you lost your virginity to men that ya didn't even know."

"My virginity is none of your business," Levy snapped. "I told you that I'm fine. This is fine. Everything is fine. So it's fine, okay? I don't need your pity because I was raped. I need you to drop it, because I'm fine."

Gajeel raised his hand to her face, using a calloused thumb to wipe another tear from her face, "I want you to look me in the eyes and tell me that you're not scared to go to sleep because of the nightmares."

Levy looked away, but Gajeel didn't move his hand.

He took one of her hands and held it in his. "I want you to look me in face, Levy, and tell me that your hands aren't busted up because ya didn't feel the need to fight, and not because you were so scared of the men who were touching you that you couldn't move."

Levy opened her mouth, preparing her words, but shut it when the words never came. She looked down, "I can't say that. I can't lie about that, Gajeel."

He nodded at the crying mage, "Come here, Shrimp."

She fell into his chest, sobbing, "My body feels so numb, but I can't even think about it without wanting to cry, scream, or throw up."

Gajeel did his best to be personable. He tried to comfort her, but emotions were not his strong suit unless it was anger and this was so much more than anger.

"You _never_ have to lie to me. I don't care what's going on, I want you to know that I'm going to listen. It may not be the most comforting thought, because I'm… well because I'm not good at emotions and conversations, but I'll try for ya. I'm gonna do my best to be there for ya."

At the beginning when Gajeel says "Go home, Lily!" I imagine Violet yelling "Go away, Tate!" in American Horror Story.

Just me? okay...

Thanks for reading :)


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